Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Coming To

I've felt a veritable bevy of emotions of the past 24 hours...I've been optimistic, cautiously optimistic, anxious, nervous, nervous as shit, tired and hungry, sad, confused, and most of this morning I called myself disheartened and heartbroken. But much like the Yankees/Sawx series, I'm strangely getting over it already. I never thought I would be doing that this quickly, but I am. I have completely accepted Kerry's loss, and I'm growing more okay with it by the second. I've done a bigger flip flop than Kerry on the $87 billion. Maybe it's because I never thought Kerry would be a good president, just better than the other guy. And that's no way to go into an election...

I mean, I'm still pissed off that this guy gets four more years, while a handful of neo-conservative douchebags get six more years in the Senate and two more years in the House. I'm gravely concerned that they'll appoint hordes of conservative judges to high circuit courts, where they'll probably make more laws than anyone in Congress or the Supreme Court put together. I'm wholeheartedly weirded out by the fact that our society is moving towards a more conservative ideology that I couldn't agree less with, and I'm worried about how our foreign policy decisions will be made over the next four years. These things worry me, and it'll take a little while to see how this plays out.

But I'm slowly coming to realize that the sky will not fall...we're still gonna be okay. Bitch, be cool. Sure, we may have to put up with another term of policies some of us definitely disagree with, and that truly sucks. But couldn't the other side say the exact same thing had our side won? A pretty conservative buddy of mine from Kentucky put things in a much better perspective when he said the following this morning: "In fact, I would be the one saying 'I can't believe this is my country' if Kerry had won the election winning the few states in New England, the upper Midwest, and the West Coast that he did-- just as it is almost irrelevant to you what people in places like where I live think, the reverse is true for me." Pretty good point...either way, 50 million-plus people were going to be pissed off at what happened.

Also, I can't honestly say that I did anything to help my side. Besides donating about $150 of my hard-earned cash to the Kerry campaign and Move-on.org (what's that, a fortnight's worth of cannibis for me, that's nothing), what the fuck did I do to stop the president's bid for re-election? What did you do to help the guy you voted for? Did we work for the campaigns? Did we go to a battleground state to make a difference where it counted? Did we drive people on our side to the polls? Did we make phone calls to get out the vote? Most people I know did none of those things, yet all of them, including myself, feel compelled to bitch about the outcome. Yes, we all participated in the great process of democracy when we voted yesterday, but can we truly feel good about doing that and nothing else? We may have the right to bitch, we may have the right to feel angry...but that doesn't help anyone. It's deeds, not words that count in this life, and most of us sat there and babbled. Jeez, this paragraph makes me sound a little like Pat Benatar. That's okay, she rocks. No, you rock.

I'm done with this partisan shit, I'm ready to move on. I'm ready to shake hands with the people I disagree with and figure out a way to make us all happy. Red states, blue states, we're at a crossroads here, and civil war without the war is what we're staring at right now. We need to come together and engage in debate about the issues that really affect our lives, not spiteful politics that govern the way we oughta think. I am fucking ready to move on.

On a very similar note, I've been e-mailing with the great T-Tyler-J, who watched this go down from his battleground state of Ohio. TTJ, if nothing else, is good for excellent insight and contrarian thinking most of the time...here's a great point here made this morning:

"I'm sickened by conservatives refusing to listen to or even acknowledge that there are other sides to the story. I'm sickened by liberals trying to make people feel stupid or talking down to them if they don't agree with what they think. It's wrong and they all should be ashamed of themselves. I almost felt a pang of guilt yesterday when I voted for one the parties.

It's really a broken machine, every little bit of it. It seems like Republicans and Democrats are more interested in besting each other than doing what's best for our country. It's time for revolution. But we won't even get that far. Like the politicians, it seems like people want to be proved "right" more than they want to fix what's wrong with America. They want to wallow in negativity and trash the guy next door with the opposing view. They want someone on TV to validate their opinions so they can go stand under the elephant or donkey umbrella and laugh at the people that are caught in the rain. It's spiteful, it appeals to our LCDs and sadly, it's what this country has become.

So I don't feel downhearted about four more years. It's the same old, same old. I feel downhearted because of this lack of common ground and complete disrespect for anyone that doesn't see things the same way someone might, and the sad truth that it's not changing anytime soon. People are no longer capable of respectfully disagreeing with other people or positions."

10 Comments:

I didn't write that, I swear. If I had it would have been Gypsy/Ace in '08. Anyway, regarding no longer being able to disagree politely. My parents once broke into our republican neighbors' house and taped JFK posters up everywhere. The neighbors then hammered a Nixon billboard to the top of our house while no one was home. True story.

we re-elected bush. which begs the question, how bad does a guy have to fuck up to get the boot around here? (poor daschle) not that most republicans acknowledge any error on bush's part. i mean, it's fair (if not cliche) to say that we live in a country that cares more about a blow job than a war. messy, both. and the kicker is, many of the people who voted for bush have only screwed themselves. my job won't be outsourced. i'm not getting shipped off to iraq (most likely). i don't live near a chemical waste repository, won't suffer from some rare immuno-collapse as a result, and won't need the life-saving treatment that isn't available because i voted for a candidate who doesn't believe in stem cell research (at least i hope i won't). i won't get fucked by a family member and have no choice but to birth an inbred child because abortion has once again become a back-alley affair (sorry, i had to go there.. it was only for effect, i promise). and the list goes on.but really, we're all screwed. you say the sky won't fall and i hope you're right, but a neo-conservative supreme court has the power (not to mention the bowels) to shit all over the last quarter century of cultural evolution and there's nothing we can do about it. not even in 4 years, when i will be an old hag and will only care about social security and prescription drugs, anyway.the hardest part for me is accepting that i'm in the minority on these issues. issues which, to me, do not fall in shades of gray, but rather establish the boundaries between civilized thought and not. it's true, i am being close-minded, but only as close-minded as the system itself, which protects the rights of the individual and draws a line between church and state. and i don't think we should be trying to find a middle ground here.alright, alright, sorry about the outburst. but i, for one, do not see the light at the end of this tunnel.

"it seems like people want to be proved "right" more than they want to fix what's wrong with America"

this is one of my main contentions as well, and the most plausible reason i can come up with for why people continue to support candidates that don't really represent what they believe. it seems people would rather say, "my team won!" than say, "well, i represented myself as well as possible, but i ended up a 'loser'"

i think whatever barrier it is that stops people from actually expressing what they believe when they vote needs to be overcome, if the true flower of democracy is ever to bloom. what that barrier is, i can't presume to know-- but i agree that the solution is something along the lines of what you were suggesting above, where people listen to and try to understand everyone else's views, no matter how divergent.

Dear Anonymous,A neo-conservative is not what you think it is. A neo conservative is someone like David Brooks or William Safire; most prominent jewish republicans are neo conservatives. They therefore do not beleive in fundamental Christian values. THey are people who feel stirngly about foreign policy and Israel and are defense hawks, but are more centrist vis-a-vis domestic policy i.e. pro-choice, pro stem cell, yet fiscally conservative. I don't mean to be hateratin' here, but your faux-intellectual rant was crap. The people elected to the Senate are actual neo conservatives it is quite unlikely that tere will be any Roe v. Wade reversal in the near future.That said, I wholeheartedly agree with Ace. Either way, we were going to get a shitty leaser no one is psyched about. THe bottom line is that no one was voting for anyone, they were voting against - it was really a choice of the lesser of two evils. In order to have won this election, they needed someone better than the putz from Massachusetts.

I like the debate we got goin' on here...see, why can't people like us be on the ballots and people choose between clear thought and clear thought, even if those thoughts are radically opposed to one another?

All I know is, this is real, this happened, and we can't start bitching about it now. The time for bitching is over, the time for activism and action is upon us...if we want to change things, then we better be prepared to do something about it. Easier said than done, but easier done with action than words. I'm the ultimate hypocrite, I know...

I welcome ALL points on this here blog -- even if you're a Jew-hating, abortion doctor-killing gun toter, I truly welcome that. I'll disagree to no end and we'll fight to no end, but there's no way to get through this divide if we don't TALK about what irks us. I believe that today. I don't know why, I just do.

anonymous,i made a mistake and you were right to call me on it. but to argue that this administration does not have clear objectives vis-a-vis roe v. wade which are, as of today, a lot more reachable (despite a neo conservative presence), sounds like a moderate conservative spin to me. or have i misrepresented moderate conservatives now too? i hope you're right, though.yours,anonymous

well, i can't be on the ballot because i fill my body with copious amounts of drugs and though i don't really get laid very often now, as soon as any measure of celebrity were bestowed upon me, i'd bone anything with long hair, a skirt, and poutty lips (except johnny damon, who'd have to settle for a reach around)...

oddly enough, i believe those things basically disqualify from me from running for office, but don't keep me from registering for a blogger address.

g_pi, I'm sneaky like that...and thanks for that link. I'm a big fan of Canada -- got a lot of friends up there. Keep the people up there on notice that there are still good people down here.

Ahren, I'm with you...I'd gladly run for office if it meant I could keep my private life private. But as someone who has a spotty past of drug use and at least two or three unreported sexual assaults, I think I'll stay out of the public spotlight for now...